Description

You play as Simon, a 19-year old fellow living in Sweden. Simon suffers from anxiety and depression and most likely has a drug abuse problem, although it's not stated explicitly. One night, as Simon is returning home he is hit by a car and left on the street. Waking up, he finds himself in a back alley with a knife in his hand. Soon after that Simon receives a text message from his mother, telling him to come home. Using his phone as a flashlight Simon tries to find his way through the city streets. He has a long way to go from downtown to the suburbs where his mother's house is. Soon he discovers a variety of monsters - strange and twisted creatures, most of which look strangely humanoid. What is happening in the city? Where have all these monsters come from?

Cry of Fear is a first-person horror shooter. The horror effect is achieved by the game's dark atmosphere and constant anticipation of something awful waiting around every corner, giving the game the feel of Silent Hill 2 viewed from the first-person perspective. Some areas are inhabited by monsters that cannot be killed and must be avoided or escaped at all costs, much like in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Many portions of the game require patient study of the locations, search for quest items and backtracking.

Simon definitely has means to defend himself: a variety of melee weapons including a police baton and a sledgehammer, and an assortment of firearms, from pistols to the powerful M16 and sniper rifle. However, the ammo for firearms is scarce and inventory space is limited: Simon can carry up to six items simultaneously (and only three items in the later portion of the game). Usually you'll have a source of light in your inventory, a couple of quest items, a healing item (which comes in the form of morphine syringes) and a melee weapon, limiting the use of firearms to one or two weapons at a time. Many items and weapons can be dual-wielded, for example, it is possible to hold a gun in one hand and a lantern in the other.

Simon has a stamina meter which depletes rather quickly when Simon sprints or jumps. Game progress is saved only at certain points via tape recorders found in the levels. The hardest difficulty setting also limits the numbers of savegames available to the number of tapes which Simon needs to carry with him, much like in early Resident Evil games.

On his way home Simon will visit varied locations including city streets and haunting indoor areas, parks, sewers, an electric train, a forest, a mental clinic and more - areas both claustraphobically small and rather spacious. Apart from visiting real life locations (which are even more real, since they are based on the photographs of real places in Stockholm, Sweden), Simon will sometimes find himself in bizarre horror sequences. During the game some decisions have to be made which determine the outcome of the story: singleplayer campaign offers multiple endings and some of them add a specific level at the end of the game. The game features a number of unlockables like player skins, secret weapons and even a secret short campaign where you play as another character.

There's also multiplayer co-op for up to four players with a story of its own. The players are cops trying to stop the madness that turned the city streets into a nightmare. In this mode mostly the same singleplayer maps are used, but they are played in a rearranged order, generally from the end of singleplayer campaign to the beginning. On many maps the monsters spawn in waves and so sometimes it is advisable to find the map exit as soon as possible rather than fight them off, as there are no quest items or other restrictions preventing the players to do so. Players can revive fallen partners if they have a morphine syringe available. If all players are dead the map restarts. Sometimes during the multiplayer campaign the cops will have horror sequences of their own: the screen goes black and white, the map exit becomes blocked and the players face a nightmare version of Simon armed with a shotgun who needs to be killed to escape the map.

Originally released in February 2012 as a total conversion for Half-Life requiring the original HL to run, Cry of Fear was later released as a standalone game via Steam Greenlight program. Steam version also adds several custom campaigns.